Bird Boned
by youllstartariotbarbarella
Summary: a collection of vaguely klarolijah drabbles.
1. Homecoming

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. No really. I'm fucking broke. **

**A/N: here...have some vaguely klarolijah drabble-ish stuff. idk. **

**Prompt: Sometimes_ Caroline found it hard to breath. Then he reminded her that she didn't need to anymore. Elijah was good like that._**

* * *

She woke up to his hands on her bare back. They weren't soft. The pads of his fingers were rough, callous even. He wasn't always a man of luxury and excess, fine suits and bright lights. There was a time when he wielded sword and axe against beasts and worked the earth. Now _he _was the monster in the night. He made the world work for him but the evidence of his origin is still on his hands. There was some irony to that but Caroline was too tired to finish her thought.

"You're home early," she murmured slightly irritated.

Caroline hated it when they didn't give her fair warning. Though she supposed she should be glad that at least he made an effort to call first or send a letter. Klaus on the other hand just showed up most of the time. He was like a sudden downpour or a great gust of wind always catching her unaware. Caroline suspected that he did it to tease her and maybe also to keep her on her toes.

"I'm sorry I didn't call first," he replied but his voice was distant.

There was a hazy quality to his presence like he was a dream or a spectre that would evaporate as soon as the sun rose to stab him through with its harsh yellow light. Caroline forced herself awake just a little bit more suddenly afraid that he might not be there in the morning. She may have hated it when they came to her unannounced but she was always glad to have them. Caroline pushed at the groggy feeling of cotton in her brain. She needed to grab hold of him lest he melt into to the air. She only managed to yawn and stretch beneath his slender fingers then snuggle down deeper into the sheets.

His cool, rough fingers start at the base of her neck where her skin stretched tightly over the bones in her spine. They worked their way down over each bump, each vertebra pressing lightly over her pale skin. He took his time inspecting the alignment and under his breath Caroline could hear him counting. It was like he was checking to make sure she's all there.

"Did you go to see him yet?"

Klaus was in the city as well. She had spotted him a few times smiling over a cup of coffee at her from another table at her favorite cafe. But before she could get to him he would be gone . On the table there was nothing but the check and the tip. He always left a little drawing of a smiley face down at the bottom. She wasn't sure if it was for her or the waitress.

"I have not," Elijah said pressing his lips against the shell of her ear so she can feel every single sound as it traveled through the air then down into the cavern of her ear, "I'll go tomorrow."

He crawled into the bed besides her satisfied with whatever statistics he had found in the inspection of her spine. As the cold rounds of the buttons on his dress-shirt pressed into the skin of her back, Caroline sighed contentedly. She would fall asleep somewhere in between the beats of his slow steady heart. Tomorrow they'd be together again. Caroline thought she felt the world shudder at the very notion.

* * *

**A/N: yea so I'm just gonna keep these drabbles all in one place. they are probably all gonna be happening in one verse and are all gonna be vaguely related to each other...idk. I'm just gonna make drabbles about klarolijah kay?**

**is that cool with everyone?**

**I'm trying to ease myself back into fandom. **


	2. To the Sea

**Disclaimer: I own nothing because I am a broke college student who writes fanfiction and has no redeemable qualities or talents.**

**Prompt: I've thought about it myself, once or twice, over the centuries, truth be told.**

**trigger warning: suicide, depression**

**nothing but an angst fest here darlings. you know the drill**

**klaroline. sorta.**

* * *

She drowned herself once. Caroline would like to say that it was purely scientific. She never really got to test the limits of her new body before. Sure there was that one time Klaus impaled her with a lamp or the time she overpowered Damon and a dozen others but she had never had time to just feel the whole vampire thing out for herself. So after a few years and once the fire had burned out in little Mystic Falls, Caroline bolted. She left a few voice messages on machines and packed up a perfectly arranged suitcase. She kissed her mother goodbye in the static morning light with the leaves falling crisp and pumpkin-colored to the ground then she was gone. Somewhere in the back of her head she knew that she'd end up back there again. It had happened to Klaus, Katherine, the Salvatores, they had all been sucked back to that little town like tiny specks of dirt and dust into the mouth of a vacuum. Caroline had a feeling one day she'd be walking down those sleepy streets again or sipping cheap liquor down at the Grill. It was only a matter of time.

Caroline hyperventilated the whole bus trip to the coast.

When she got there, Caroline immediately regretted her decision. Fall did not look pretty on America's eastern coastline. The sea was dark and uninviting, sloshing against the shoreline with a tired repetition. When left unbaked by the summer sun, the smell of the salt and seawater was no longer comforting but harsh and sharp as it was left hanging frozen in the air.

She considered just going back home but she already left her messages. They were really good too. Caroline had planned them out on index cards and had practiced in front of the mirror for days before she had actually left them. She made all the right expressions as she recited her explanation for leaving so suddenly into the receiver. It was a waste really and it would be an even greater waste to turn back before the journey had even begun.

So she endured the autumn coast for two days, sitting in her room and pacing the floor. Caroline had her whole trip planned out. There were countless attractions she could visit. She was a tourist now with the ever present thought that anywhere she set foot now was not where she belonged. She was like those ancient nomads who had trekked across the world always searching and never ceasing except she had better hygiene. Caroline had decided that she'd start from one coast and work her way across to the other one all on her own. No Stefan to notice her every little gesture and coddle her and laugh with her. No Elena to smile and light up the world then tear it down as well. No Bonnie to keep heads straight and laces tight. No Tyler to - she tried not to think about that.

Caroline would have to be all those things for herself now.

And over the course of two days of going over her plans and mapping out her route a strange sort of pressure began to build up at her middle, somewhere between her pancreas and her spine. It felt like someone had started to inflate a soccer ball on her intestines. Pushing and pushing the air into it until it was so tight against her insides that she thought she would die if she didn't get out of that hotel room.

Naturally she ended up on the beach. It was there where she first considered it, drowning.

While she started to wrestle her boots off down in the sand, it occurred to her that she had never swam in the ocean. Caroline wondered if it would be very different from those summer afternoons spent wading in the cold muddy water by the lakeshore. Looking out at the angry dark ocean as currents stirred it around beneath the dark gray bowl of the sky, she knew it would be. Not even the blood pumping streaks of impossible strength through her expired body could keep her from being pulled under.

She gave up on her shoes. They'd fill up with sand and hold her down once she got to the water. That would make it easier. Caroline would later chock the whole incident up to a temporary moment of madness, a brief stretch of utter loss of self.

It was cold for a long time, impossibly cold. After the first few minutes of choking and hacking up the seawater that burned her lungs, she eventually just stopped breathing all together. There was a moment of utter stillness and then everything went weird. Her head disconnected itself from her body and went floating up and up like bubbles on a breeze. It was not completely unpleasant. The sand and water in her shoes were like anchors. They stayed glued to the ground while her body was torn every which way. She felt like a rag doll. It took her an hour to fall asleep.

When her body washed ashore, he was waiting for her.

It took her a few moments to regain consciousness and even longer to realize he was even there. Then there was the coughing and hacking and then a bit of vomit as well. All the water that had accumulated in her throat and pooled in her lungs was not at all easy to dislodge and claw out. It was a few weeks before she had all of it out and even longer to cut out the feeling the cold, dead slosh of seawater in her chest.

"Oh _god_ not you again," she said but the words sound strange.

Her tongue was numb and swollen with salt. Her mouth was shriveled. She tried to work feeling back into the muscles in her face, opening and closing it, stretching the muscles in her jaw. Then suddenly she felt ashamed as she realized what she had just done. What was worse was that _he_ had been there to witness it. Of all the people in the world to witness her plight, her utter hopelessness, it just had to be him. Caroline realized now why she had gone to the sea and now he knew too. Had her skin not been so blue she would have flushed bright red.

Caroline tried to sit up but her arms were still too stiff and weak to hold her up so she decided to just collapse down into the sand with her arms spread out wide like she was hugging the sky. The water kissed the knuckles on her left hand as if in farewell.

_Goodbye, goodbye. We'll miss you. Come back soon. _

"It isn't what it looks like," she mumbled. "I don't need your help. Just leave, okay? I don't need your help, Klaus."

With no electric shock or CPR to aid it along, her heart started up slowly. First one beat echoing in the cavity of her chest, then another and another. It was so loud that she almost missed the crunch of sand under his boot as he crouched down besides her. He looked older somehow. The lines in his face were all still the same and the sharp corners and angles were just as quick as ever. But now his shoulders seemed to slump and there was the quiet light of dying embers behind his eyes where once an inferno had raged. He seemed to be without purpose.

He touched his thumb to her blue lips and smiled like he was sorry. It was a strange look for him.

"No need to be ashamed, love. I've thought about it myself, once or twice over the centuries," he said, "and it never is exactly what you hoped it'd be."

Caroline looked away though this time not out of shame or guilt but out of irritation. She was so tired of him baring his soul to her. Like what the hell was she supposed to do with that anyway? She wasn't his damned priest waiting for him in a confessional so he could whisper out his wicked deeds.

_I'm not God. I didn't die for your sins and I never will. _

"You need to get a new hobby," she whispered her voice sounding a bit like her own again.

He smiled but that time it was his own, that smug perfectly symmetrical slice of mirth across his face. Caroline was oddly relieved to see it there but she didn't let it show.

"And you need to get some new clothes," he replied oddly chipper for someone who had just witnessed a body wash up to shore. "Once you pull yourself together come see me. I'll be waiting in your room."

First there was a moment of utter disbelief as he straightened and turned his back to the sea and to her. Then there was anger. Craning her neck around so that she could face him, Caroline squealed with rage.

"Are you fucking serious?" she shouted her voice cracked and the joints in her jaw felt rusted and brittle. "You're just gonna leave me here?!"

He paused then shrugged, the leather jacket draped over his shoulders moved stiffly with the motion.

"Said you didn't need my help, sweetheart," he called back. "Don't keep me waiting too long."

She watched as he sauntered away, his dark jeans and heavy boots giving him no trouble as he went along. In little time at all he was up and over the bank and had disappeared from her sight. Caroline let out another hiss of frustration, beating her fists into the sand. Her weak hands barely made a dent in the wet sand and that only made her howl louder. Like a child she screamed and raged, digging her heels into the ground and twisting back and forth until she was left panting in the sand. The water still kissed her hand but it rose higher now, up to her wrist.

_Come back, come back we miss you already._

She ignored it and rolled to her side. Her body was heavy and her clothes weighed her down but she began to crawl forward. For the first time in almost two years, Caroline felt human. She hated it and she realized that the whole thing had been a stupid mistake. She was a vampire now. Immortal, strong, and unafraid, not even the sea could strangle her free of her body. She rose up over the dune to find him waiting for her, not in her room at all.

"Come now, love don't look so surprised," he said pulling her up to her feet then wrapping her up in a towel he had brought back from her hotel. "Sometimes even I can be _nice_."

He spat out the last word out like it was poisonous. Pushing his hands away from her, Caroline huffed then carried on towards the hotel. He followed behind content for the moment to let her lead. Klaus laughed when he saw that her feet were bare.

In the end her boots proved to be too heavy. She had yanked them off down by the water before crawling up the beach. The next morning she returned to the beach hoping to find her boots but they were gone, washed away with the tide. For a long time after she imagined them there, at the bottom of the sea dragging themselves across the ocean floor. It was the one piece of her that the hungry ocean had claimed. The rest had moved on and never returned.

* * *

**I know, I know. Everyone was wildly OOC. I apologize. If you would like to tell me just how shitty and OOC it was I am always happy to hear it (that was NOT sarcasm. I honestly don't even know how to use sarcasm).**

**Drop me a line, baby. 3**


	3. Siblings

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

**honestly if you're still reading...why? why do that to yourself?**

**so...again...I have no idea what's going on here. also present tense hurts my head. **

**Siblings**

* * *

After watching Elijah and Klaus together, Caroline is grateful that she's an only child. They use silent forms of torture that leave no mark against each other. Elijah and Klaus make Caroline glad for the loneliness she had endured in her childhood. Maybe it was just a Mikaelson thing but she didn't really want to find out. It wasn't worth it.

That's why when she notices that Elijah never laughs around Klaus she thinks that it's just another love/hate brother thing. It isn't until the first time Rebekah visits while she's with them that Caroline realizes she's wrong. There's a total cinematic moment when Klaus runs to Rebekah, picks her up off the ground and spins her around. First Rebekah laughs and then Klaus does too, unabashedly and completely open. It's a little bit touching if she's honest. _I could still take 'um or leave 'um_, she thinks to herself.

Then she looks to Elijah as he bends his neck and puts the knuckle of his left index finger to the line of his mouth and presses. He glances up at his two siblings (the only ones he has left) and Caroline knows that it isn't about hate at all. The way he looks at Klaus and Rebekah as they bask in sheer joy of being in each other's presence, there's no room for hate in that kind of look.

When finally gets him alone he's just standing out by the large bay windows that look out over the city below. Caroline thinks it's a bit creepy how they, the three Originals, can just be still for long like they've fallen asleep with their eyes open. Though when she thinks about it, it's a bit like the people in retirement homes who sit in their pajamas for hours just looking out into space. Technically speaking the Originals were way beyond the required retirement age. The whole world must feel like a retirement home for them.

"You don't laugh when Klaus is around, not around Rebekah either," Caroline says taking up the stop on the right side of the window.

She doesn't want to crowd him.

"I'm not going to bare my soul to you, Miss Forbes," Elijah replies, his tone dry. He rolls his eyes too for good measure. "I'm not that kind of girl. You'll have to buy me dinner first."

That's a joke. She didn't know that Elijah could joke. Although she has been shacking up with Klaus for close to ten years now, Elijah is still a stranger to her. Klaus feels that way sometimes as well but at least they've got sex.

"'Course," she says, "the night is still young. We could blow this joint and paint the town red. Whaddya say, doll?"

In that one sentence she's used up all lingo she can still remember from her American History class. It's been over a decade. Give her a break. Elijah cracks a smile. And she likes it but Caroline really hopes he doesn't continue the joke because that's really all the lingo she knows. She is infinitely relieved when he remains silent only willing to offer that one smile. But then she starts to feel awkward and feels that irresistible itch to fill up the silence with something, anything.

"I just wanted you to know that maybe I don't get it and I might not ever, I mean why would someone not laugh because of siblings? Not like I really understand the what goes on between siblings because I've never had a brother or sister and your family, no offense, has some major issu-"

The look on his face tells her that his patience is growing thin. Elijah is not a man of many words. Caroline wouldn't be surprised if he's allergic to them.

"Sorry." She smiles sheepishly. "I just wanted to say that I noticed and I know we're not buddies or anything. I don't know why you won't but I wish you'd laugh with them."

"That is really none of your business, Miss Forbes."

All traces of his smile has disappeared.

"I know. Just thought I'd say - "

"I'd appreciate silence much more."

"Right."

Caroline doesn't know why she stays, staring out at the yellow lights dappling the darkness down below in silence. He doesn't ask.

* * *

**A/N: yea...no...I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm even doing anymore. ahahahaha.**


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